Google, target of worldwide surveillance and takedown requests

Google continued to demonstrate its commitment to transparency on Monday by releasing fresh statistics on the number of times it has disclosed private user data to a government, or removed content at government request. The country-by-country report covers the second half of 2010.

During that period, the United States was the top requester of user information (4,601 requests), while Brazil was the leader in takedowns, with 263 requests leading to the removal of 12,363 items.

Google has committed to releasing such data at six-month intervals, and the data now goes back 18 months. US data requests were up about 30 percent in the second half of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009. Brazil, which requested the most data in the second half of 2009, actually saw its data requests fall since then.